Screen Junkies » God Bless America

Get To Know Director Bobcat Goldthwait

Wookie Johnson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:00:13 +0000

Bobcat Goldthwait is best known for his work in the 1980′s and early 1990′s as a squeally-voiced stand up comedian and actor. Since then he’s stepped away from the limelight to pursue a career behind the camera. After builidning a cult follow, Goldthwait’s films are beginning to catch on with critics. His newest film, God Bless America, could be the one that breaks him out into the mainstream. But seeing as the film mocks the mainstream while painting a literal target on it, let’s just assume this one is really going to find its audience on DVD.

How does a comedian go from fistfights with Steve Guttenberg to earning critical praise for subversive film-making that exposes the fakery of our neighbors? Here’s how. Check out a timeline of Goldthwait’s directorial projects below to get a good sense of the biting and poignant work the director has created.

Shakes the Clown

Bobcat Goldthwait‘s first directorial feature is a cult favorite. He stars as a depressed birthday party clown who needs to pull his life together when he’s framed for murder. The satire of the stand up comedy circuit follows several groups of painted entertainers – clowns, mimes, and others – as they obsess about status and outdoing one another. It features many of Goldthwait’s friends from his days on the stage. Adam Sandler, Tom Kenny, Kathy Griffin, and Blake Clark, to name a few.

Windy City Heat

Windy City Heat was a cruel but hilarious hoax film that aired on Comedy Central in 2003. Planned by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla, the reality film follows an unwitting comic named Scary Perry as he believes he’s been cast as the lead in a major motion picture. However, everyone around him is in on the joke leading to hilarious moments as this naive guy is completely f***ed with. It’s said that the elaborate joke took eleven years to pull off. Surprisingly, Perry didn’t off himself when the veil was lifted.

The Trailer For ‘God Bless America’ Looks Like My Dream Journal

Penn Collins — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:56:20 +0000

If you think you’ve had it up to here with the vapid celebrity culture in the US, the trailer for God Bless America demonstrates that you might have a ways to go. From the warped mind of Bobcat Goldthwait (yup, he’s a director now…check out World’s Greatest Dad), comes this film which follows a man who can’t take the stupidity anymore, and, in an effort to fend off an Idiocracy-like culture, goes on a killing spree.

Ok, Bobcat. You’ve got our interest.

In the film, a pitch-black comedy, a man is driven to suicide by both the state of the world and his own life, only to find that perhaps he could serve a higher purpose by dispatching those who dumb down pop culture to near-clinical levels. He finds a tweenage girl to serve as the Bonnie to his Clyde as he goes around clearing the streets and airwaves of the dregs of America.

Well done, Bobcat. Well done.

The film hits OnDemand on April 6 and theaters May 11.

Bobcat Goldthwait Wants To Murder Some Teenagers

Joseph Gibson — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:46:36 +0000

Followers of Bobcat Goldthwait‘s career as a director and comedian know that he’s right at home in the world of pitch-black comedy. For instance, his last movie, World’s Greatest Dad, is a comedy about a father who capitalizes on his son’s accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation (look it up) for fame and fortune. So the premise for his next movie, God Bless America, isn’t as surprising as it might sound – it’s about Bobcat-aged guy who catches a “My Super Sweet 16″-like program on MTV and “drives 400 miles and kills that girl.” And in a scarily believable development, he gets away with it, and starts murdering other deserving targets across the USA.

Presumably these targets will be other miscreants he’s seen on television, which makes me miss Billy Mays more than ever. Maybe he’ll go after the Slap-Chop guy. (via The AV Club)